Wiedergutmachung as a Claim to the Rehabilitation of Political Subjectivity and Social Agency

Abstract

In this chapter, the Luxembourg Agreement on Wiedergutmachung is analyzed as a decisive stage in the postwar political and economic (re)construction of both Germany and Israel. Economic recovery was the main aim of the compensation Israel wanted to receive, but the economic dimension was equally important from the German perspective, where many argued that extensive reparations would cripple the German economy. Yet from a political perspective, the Luxembourg Agreement was the first act of the Federal Republic as a sovereign state on the international stage, prepared and executed at least in part by former members of the Nazi regime. For Israel, the agreement was a crucial moment in the establishment of the state as the main representative of the Jewish people, as well as a confirmation of the legitimacy of the first generation of political leaders of the new state. This means that the process toward Wiedergutmachung is here not primarily interpreted from the perspective of the reparation of loss and the rehabilitation of rights between perpetrators and victims of past injustice, but as claims to new forms of political subjectivity and social agency, in the shape of sovereign states, legitimate political elites, and economic strength.